


Would You Build it Anew if I Asked?

by Silveriss



Series: It's Keith - Trails of Memories [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Adulthood, Anger, Angst, College, Conflict, Deadly illness, Enstranged Relationship, Family, First Meeting, Hope, It's Keith Universe, Keith Family, One-Shot, Quintero Family, Reunion, Siblings, Starting Over, Timeline: Keith is 20, hospital room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 18:02:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15124937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silveriss/pseuds/Silveriss
Summary: Nine years after her sister ran away, Keith finds herself staring down the door of a hospital room.On the other side is a choice: this day could either be the first step on a long path to rebuild her relationship with her sister, or the last time she will ever see the stranger who abandoned her.Whatever Keith chooses will depend on Sophie, or so she thought - but as soon as she opens the door, it seems things might also depend on Neil: Keith's six-year-old nephew, and unexpected addition to the sisters' reunion.Alternatively: Neil is the only sunshine in this hospital room full of sad, angry adults.





	Would You Build it Anew if I Asked?

**Author's Note:**

> TW for talk about deadly illness and death, implied difficult/toxic relationship with parents, and hospital room.

White noise in her ears. A body that felt too tight yet too large, like a vacant cage.

The decision was already taken - she wouldn't be here otherwise - but it didn't make it easier to proceed with. There often come times, in the course of a human life, when old wars need to be buried in order to start the building of something new. By making a call from her hospital bed, Sophie had set the first stone. The decision to set the second now rested on Keith's shoulders: if she turned away, the stone would crumble to dust and the field would be dead again - but if she opened the door, the step she would take would be the first of many more to come, each one a painful reminder of the past they had lost.

She relaxed her jaw and breathed in strong, and deep. Waited for her fists to turn back into hands.

When she stepped inside the room she was like a ghost, her feet and the door as silent as the past nine years she would never completely manage to leave behind.

Nine years. She'd lived almost as long with a sister as she'd gone without.  
  
The room was crowded with light coming from an open window, jumping from one white surface to the other until no corner was left for a shadow to hide. It was a two-dimensional space, a painting without depth to walk into. Keith could only watch as every year spent apart lay before her, conspicuous and far away. She couldn’t breathe. Each detail that clashed with her memories stretched the gap between the door and the bed.

Sophie was old. Not old like the old lady who lived at the ground floor of Keith's building, but old enough to be a mother. Old enough that she _was_ , in fact, a mother. Six years ago Keith'd received a photo and a card with a name, a date, and no return address. She assumed the baby of the picture had grown into the little boy sitting on the side of the bed, holding Sophie's hand as they chattered. He had her hair color, a very light brown, but it fell in curls neither she nor Sophie ever had. Sophie's smile was boarded with the same dimples she'd always worn, but a ring now straddled her bottom lip. Keith closed the door. There was some metal catching the light around her ears, too. Rings, bars and beads. She cleared her throat. Silence fell into the room as two pairs of eyes fell into the similarities they shared.

"...Keith?"

It wasn't a greeting. It was making sure the field wasn't mined.

"It's you, isn't it?"

She sounded like she wasn't expecting an answer.

"Hey," Keith said.

Sophie's chin trembled. Sophie's eyes shone. So many years without seeing each other, yet Keith still remembered how it looked like when her sister was about to cry.

"Mama?" the boy called, disrupting the tension. Keith could barely hear him. "What's wrong?"

Sophie hiccuped, but managed to keep the tears inside. She reassured the boy, stroking his head in a way that made Keith's heart ache. She felt robbed, betrayed like the first time she'd seen Sophie hold a hand that wasn't hers. It was a childish reaction, ridiculous for her age and the anger she held inside; she pushed it down. It stung enough, however, that she didn't lessen the bite of the next words she spoke.

"Why did you call?"

"I..." She glanced at the boy and took his hand. Her voice didn't falter when she started again. She sounded hoarser than Keith remembered. "I'm sick. Very sick. It is very likely that... that I won't survive more than a few years."  
A gap. Right under her feet, a gap. She should have known this was all a trap, should have never picked the phone.

In front of her, Sophie was still talking. "It was a shock, at first. I couldn't believe it, wouldn't. I couldn't lose my family so soon after we'd finally grown to be one, it... it kept me awake at night."

Keith wanted to blow the place up. She wanted to punch Sophie and scream. Mostly she wanted to be somewhere else; she wanted to flip the bird, slam the door and run away, forget she'd ever even _had_ a sister. Finally leave this part of her life behind, locked forever in a hospital room, never to be opened. But Sophie wouldn't stop talking.

"But then I realized, I could never be at peace if I didn't at least _try_ to get my sister back, and... that gave me enough courage to contact you."

She was having second-thoughts. Keith could see it in the way she held the boy's hand, in the way she looked away to him every few seconds.

She let the silence stretch.

"How did you get my number?" Keith finally said, as neutral as she could force herself to be.

"I called our parents."

She should have known this could have only been a trap.

"Ah, so _that's_ what’s really happening here, huh?" Keith snarled, out of herself. "The re-gathering of the happy Keith family here, at your bed side, so that _you_ get to die in peace! Knowing that your death brought us all together in the end or some shit!" Oh, the face Sophie was making, all that confidence crumbling down, and each word stung like wasps. "What a cute, selfless plan, really. Too bad I'd sooner _jump out the window_ than be a part of it." It wasn't supposed to be so painful. She was supposed to be done with hurting. She was supposed to _roar_. Not break into pieces. 

"Keith-"

"No, _fuck you_ ," she stopped her, already closing the space between herself and the door. She'd had enough. "I'm out of here."

There was no way she was staying in this room longer than the time it'd take her to get out.

" _They're not coming!_ "

A beat.

Keith blew a breath out and turned around.

"I didn't tell them why I needed your number, and they didn't even ask. They're not coming here." She made a sad, little smile. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised you don't trust me anymore, but I wouldn't lie to you. I'm still your sister."

A deep, aching pain, right through the chest. It had no right to be so painful.

"Not since you left, you aren't."

It felt like staring at a wall. A mountain of words and pain too steep to climb.

"...Fair enough."

One. Two. Three. Four. The seconds stretched into minutes before Sophie broke the silence again.

"Did you get the card?"

"Yes."

"Good,” she said. “That's good." She smiled and placed a hand on one of the boy's shoulders. Keith had almost forgot he was here. "You probably guessed, but that's him. He's six years old now. Right, Neil?"

The boy nodded, then spoke. "Why is she here, mama?"

"Why don't you ask her that yourself?"

He looked at Keith, judging her. What he saw in her, she didn't know, but he seemed to deem it safe enough that he jumped off the bed and walked right up to her.

"Why did you come here?"

"Your mother called me."

He made a face like he wasn't sure he quite believed her, but commented no further.

"What's your name?"

"Keith."

"Like mama?"

"...Yes."

"What's your first name then?"

"I don't use my first name."

If the boy found that was weird, it didn't show. Maybe he was just that unfazed, or maybe he wasn't. Either way, Keith couldn't tell.

"Why did you yell? Why did you make my mom cry?"

Trick question. Keith settled for a half-truth.

"She made me cry first."

Somewhere in the background, Sophie looked away. Keith had hoped to get that reaction. It wasn't nearly as satisfying as she'd thought it would be.

"But you're not crying now."

"It was a long time ago."

"But revenge doesn't works."

Keith scoffed. "I don't care."

"Are you hurt?"

"What?"

"Dad said mean people are mean because they're hurt and they think it's unfair, so they want other people to hurt too."

"...Couldn’t I just be mean?"

The little boy shook his head. "I don't think anyone's really mean, not because they want to. I think everyone are just scared, and sometimes being scared makes us do mean things because it looks less scary."

She raised an eyebrow. "Or maybe you're wrong and I'm just mean."

The boy shook his head. "I don't think I'm wrong, and I think you think I'm not wrong too."

"And how could you know that?"

He glanced at his mother, but quickly turned back to Keith. "Because you look surprised. When adults look surprised, it's often because I'm right."

Keith realized she'd snorted too late to take it back. The boy's smile grew, and she silently admitted she'd lost that round.

He looked up at her face then, as if looking for something. He had her eyes.

“You look at lot like mama,” the boy said.

Keith glanced at Sophie. She was smiling.

“...If you say so.”

He frowned at her, seemingly trying to understand something. Keith had a feeling she knew where this conversation was going.

“Is it why you never visited?”

…But then again, maybe not.

“...What?”

“Because mama made you cry. Is that why you never visited before?”

In the corner of her eye, Keith caught Sophie’s smile faltering.

“Why should I have in the first place?”

“Because that’s what family does, unless they’re mad, and you’re family. Right mama?” he turned to ask her. Sophie hesitated a split second before nodding. “So is that why?” he asked again, looking straight up at her.

Keith didn't know what it was about this little boy that made her crouch down to his level before she answered that question. She didn't know what it was about _Neil_ that seemed to cut through most of her carefully crafted walls like they didn't exist.

Whatever it was, she liked it.

“I don't know, li’l guy, maybe you tell me. Seems like you know more about me than I do.”

The boy smiled, then, and shone with all the glory of his missing tooth. And it was too easy to smile back.

Neil turned around after a short second and trotted back to the bed. He climbed on it with the speed of habit, immediately cuddling up to his mother’s side and latching onto her hand. She smiled down at him and stroke his head.

“Keith!” The boy’s voice woke Keith up from a lethargy she hadn't noticed slipping into. She looked up at him from where she was still crouching near the door. He patted the mattress next to him a couple times. “Come sit with us, please?”

Keith looked at the picture he formed next to his mother. All chubby and bright, as small as he was Neil somehow managed to fill more space than she did. But Sophie - sitting so close to him she looked like a wrung out cloth. One Keith didn't want to get closer to. She rose up from the floor slowly, taking the time to fill up her lungs with the breathable air Neil’d shone out. The boy looked at her expectantly. She looked back. Stared. When she took several careful steps forward, her gaze suddenly found Sophie’s. _She has the eyes of a funambule_ , she thought. She wanted to paint it.

“You can sit on the bed with us or the chair, but it isn't very comfy,” Neil told her when she’d come to stand next to the bed. She didn't give the bed a glance and made for the plastic blue chair, shrugging off her backpack before she sat, and putting it under the chair.

Neil was sitting on her side of the bed, and behind his figure hid Sophie’s. They were both looking at her, two pairs of eyes colored with two different shades of hope, and the light coming from behind them framed them, white and warm. The light barely reached the corner of Keith’s left shoe. She was too far, and already too close. Neil said something.

“Do you live close to the hospital?”

“Nope. I don't live in this city.”

“You don't live in Capgrown? Did you drive here? Do you have a car?”

This boy made it really difficult not to smile.

“Yeah, I did. But I don't have my own, so I borrowed a friend's.”

“Your friend’s lucky,” he said, nodding very seriously. “Papa has a big car! So he lends it to all his friends when they need it. Well, not all the time ‘cause he needs it for the flowers, but often!”

“That’s pretty cool. How big is it?”

Neil grinned, and spread his arms as wide as he could. “Like _this_! Like the _room_! It’s _so_ big! Just like an elephant.”

Sophie chuckled then, low and soft and loving. It was like she was another person - it lit up her entire face, the way it had whenever Keith had showed her a silly doodle of a teacher she’d done, whenever they’d imagined all the conversations Sophie’s plants must be having, whenever they’d talked about how great Sophie’s life would be after high school... A part of Keith still hoped it had been.

“You said he needs it for flowers?” Keith asked Neil, very pointedly not looking at her sister. The boy _beamed_ at her.

“Yes! He does! He needs to get them all to the shop before they die in the car, because the AC’s dead. Mama says they could have them delivered but it’s too expensive, so papa gets them. It’s okay because the flowers aren't far, so it doesn't take too long and they don't die!”

“I see,” Keith said, nodding. “Your papa’s car must go really fast then.”

“Not really, it’s _old_. But it’s also mama’s car, because they bought it together from an old woman, with the shop. But mama knows how to open better, so it’s always papa who gets the flowers.”

“Do you go with him sometimes?”

“No, because I’m too small for the passenger seat. But papa says I can go when I’m bigger! Right mama?”

Sophie smiled down at him and ruffled his hair. “Right, but you’ll need to be _much_ bigger than you are, sweetie, because for now I’m ‘fraid the seat would just swallow you!” she said, and briefly tickled his side.

Keith looked at the boy and her mother laugh on the white, white bed, and she thought her sister was a good mother. Somehow, she couldn't bring herself to be surprised. Sophie stopped laughing and started to cough, then, wincing harder with each intake of breath she took.

Keith wondered how much of Sophie her son would remember when she was gone.

How much _she_ remembered.

It wasn’t much. It wouldn’t be.

“How many years?”

Sophie startled, looked away from her bubbly son. She stared at Keith, looking afraid. Like Keith was just about to go off, maybe, right here in front of her son, and it would be a mess she wouldn’t be able to control, not anymore. Not the way she used to. Keith shut her eyes and took a long breath in, unclenched her fists. Straightened her back. She repeated the question:

“How many years do you have left?”

Sophie blinked a few times, glancing between her sister and her son. It took a few seconds of struggling to keep herself together before she gently shooed Neil out the door with some pencils and loose sheets of paper. She looked unnerved watching him go.

“I don’t…” she began, looking at the door, then huffed a sigh and turned to Keith. “I don’t know how much time I have left. Doctor said I have a… a 20 % chance of making it five years.”

A sharp breath. “Five-” Keith said, and stopped. She couldn’t bring herself to say it. Wouldn’t.

_20% chance._

She turned her gaze to the window and the sun, sinking back into the plastic chair. Things like this didn’t happen. Things like this belonged in movies, books and shitty reality TV shows. Things like this did not happen to - to whom? To runaway sisters? Mothers? Florists? She sucked a breath in, sagged, brought her forehead down to her hands. Her eyes stung, she knew it, but she refused to break. She would not, could not - not this time, not this time any more than any other time after Sophie’d left. She didn’t have a sister to lose anymore.

“How…” she started, looking up once more into Sophie’s swirling eyes, caving under them both. Helplessness. A longing, somewhere buried. Keith made herself loosen up enough to talk. “What do you have.”

“It’s - It’s lung cancer. I got the results from the biopsy yesterday, right before I called you.”

Keith opened her mouth, wanting to snap, to yell, to punch Sophie in the face - anything. She forced herself to breathe.

“And they can’t… cure you.”

Sophie shook her head lightly, looking suddenly far wearier than anyone ought to be. “It’s a stage three lung cancer, not yet metastasized but probably too advanced for durable recovery. They’ll do their best to keep me alive and somewhat… somewhat _healthy_ , but they can’t - they just can’t promise anything.”

“So you’re dying,” she said, needing to blurt it out. Needing to do _something_.

Sophie flinched, but didn’t argue. Didn’t fight it.

Keith rose up from the chair and started pacing in front of the bed. The air was stale in the room, rotten, entrapped. She gestured towards the door. “Does Neil know?”

“Yes -” Sophie started, but was interrupted by a coughing fit. It was shorter this time, though it looked no less painful. Keith stilled, and turned away. “Yes, he does,” she managed to croak out once the cough had subsided. She cleared her throat, winced, and continued. “At least the main part, not the specifics. We will tell him, though, I can’t… He needs to be prepared.”

Keith closed her eyes, struggling to push down a few resilient memories. “For when you’re gone.”

Sophie met her eyes then, and something in her expression changed. There was distance in her voice when she spoke. “Yes - for when I’m gone.”

Keith was the first one to break eye contact. She needed out, needed air - she grabbed her bag without another glance for her sister, stopping only before the door with the intent to say goodbye, but Sophie’s hoarse voice beat her to it.

“Promise to visit again? It doesn’t have to be soon, I know this is a lot, just… please visit again.”

“Bye,” Keith said, and opened the door.

She could feel Neil’s eyes staring at her on the whole trip back to Trevnev.

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider letting me know what you think! It'd be greatly appreciated. These characters mean a lot to me.


End file.
